Last day of a very good year. It’s -8 degrees, I’ve got all my animals taken care of, so it’s a good time to reflect on 2017 and make some plans for 2018.

I feel like I had a very good year with very few conflicts. I upset a few people with some things I’ve done or said, but I feel real good about how I handled myself in reacting to the situation.

I have had very few animal conflicts. I have gotten along very well with the horses I have ridden and the livestock I have worked, and actually feel like I am getting along better with animals right now than ever before. I have two cats purring on my lap as I am writing this.

We have all these animals of different species and I really like how they are all getting along. I can walk up and pet every horse on our place, can scratch all but two of the bovines, (I only have 5 here at the moment) and the sheep are about the same.

I have been reading a book titled “Dawn in Golden Valley”. Golden Valley is the county I live in, and it is all about the settling and history of this country, from big ranches to homesteaders. It is a great lesson in how good and easy we have it in 2017, but it also makes me wonder why when we have all these conveniences and “stuff” why we aren’t more content and happy.

As I was walking up to the 3 room cabin we moved into this year, I realize we have both worlds covered. We womanized and modernized Fred Cougill’s masterpiece that he built by hand with no power tools. It has propane heat and electricity, internet, and running water,and a refrigerator/freezer. All the things that make life so much easier and convenient than the earlier days I am reading about.

We have a wood cook stove that will heat the place, and I have a shed full of wood I cut, split and stacked, a freezer full of beef and pork, the Musseshell river real close, lots of good hay, and some good saddle horses, and a good rifle and shotgun so I feel pretty well covered no matter what happens.

I have lost one thing that I really enjoyed this year. Cargill sold their feedlot business, and I don’t get to go spend time with Katie Holcolm and the crews that made them work. I really enjoyed the time I spent working for Cargill.

I made up for it with NCBA’s new Stockmanship and Stewardship tour. They partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim and had really great events around the country that I was proud to be part of.

I also contracted to work exclusively for Zoetis in Canada. A great group that took me to lots of great operations of all differs types in Canada. It was one of the best things that I have done as a business decision.

I also got to go to Mexico with Zoetis and work with some of their feedlot customers. It was amazing to see all those bulls(no castration)and how good they are ate feeding cattle and how interested they were in improving handling.
I really love the Mexican culture and language. The people are so happy with whatever they have, no matter if it’s a lot or not much.

I also got to go to two very different operations, Twin Willows Ranch in New Mexico, and Paicines Ranch in California that were just the opposite of the mega agriculture I am around so much, and I enjoyed being there and hearing the philosophy of each. I am real lucky to get to see lots of different types of operations from dairy’s to bucking bulls and everything in between.

I have said it many times that I have the best job in the world, and I really think
It’s true.

My last presentation of the year was in Townsend Montana. This was real special to me and brought back some great memories. We stopped and visited with Larry and Shelley Richtmyer. I worked for them and Boyd Iverson many years ago. It was right in the time I quit the auction business and went to work cowboying full time.

We summered at “Battle Creek”. It was big pastures, lots of cattle, and a great headquarters with lots of history. It was about fifteen miles to the closest telephone at Ringling, Montana and about 25 to get groceries in White Sulphur Springs.

While Tammy was getting groceries she saw a poster for a colt starting clinic just down the road from us. I had no idea who Buck Brannaman was but went to the clinic, and it really helped me with the goal of becoming the best stockman I could possibly be.

I’ve been through lots of phases in my life since the good old days at the Bar FL,
some I’m ashamed of and some I’m real proud of, but I feel I have never lost sight of the goal to become the best stockman I could be, and that goal is why I have the best job in the world.

Here are some of the things I think are important that I have learned last year and the previous fifty.

-Consumption is very important thing to consider. Are the things you are consuming really adding to your quality of life?

-Soil health is most important thing as far as sustainability goes. When I go to the farm country that have produced vegetables (soil mining)for many years it looks like it must have very little nutritional value. (My Dad said it’s like eating cardboard.) I feel livestock grazing/feeding and redistributing nutrients to the soil is so important to soil health.
This is why I feel I need to take good vitamins because of not knowing what is in our food. We supplement our cattle with minerals and vitamins, why wouldn’t it make sense for us?

-When you build a fence around an animal to restrict its movement you have just taken responsibility for the caring of that animals nutrition needs and mental needs, and the better you are at creating high quality of life for animals, and potential for profit the better stockman you are. (My opinion)

-I have spent quite a lot of time in Yuma, Arizona with retired people. Health, money, and companionship are very important for quality of life no matter what age. I’d recommend starting now, no matter your age preparing for the future on all these things. If you have them now, you will most likely have them as you age. That goes right back to the consumption thing.

So as we roll into 2018, I feel we are in the best time ever for high quality of life. If we consume technology wisely it will really improve our quality of life. The physical demands on us is less than ever, and the ease of getting food and entertainment is easier than ever. We have lots of choices on what to consume for our entertainment and quality of life. We also have lots of choices for things that diminish quality of life. Your decisions will make it the best or worst.

I read in the book “Sapiens” that humans developed because of bone marrow and gossip. Nutrition is at our fingertips, and gossip travels fast with the internet, so now the good hunter is the one that understands good nutrition, and the wise one is the person that can separate good gossip from bad gossip.

I think this is a good time to not only think about one New Years resolution, but look at your whole situation and fix the “Whole” rather than just one little part.

I sometimes wonder why I am writing this stuff and why you would want to read it. I feel I have been real fortunate to be around some real thinkers that caused me to take a old time common sense way of looking at things. I don’t like confrontation with animals and horses. This gives me the advantage to think of different ways to approach learning and presenting ideas. I guess you don’t have to read it, so you must find some value in it.

I’ve got some things I am going to do this year. Several years ago Ron McDanials gave me a daily bible. I have made the commitment three or four times before but it’s been a few years so I’m going to do it again. I really enjoy the story of Jesus.

I have lots of aches and pains. I think it’s because when I’m on the road doing my job I don’t get the right kind of movement, and when I get home I work muscles that aren’t worked and I’m always sore. I am doing a yoga workout to see if that helps.

Im going to get better at understanding and speaking Spanish.

I am going to work as much as I can this year. I have even agreed to present at a couple of horse fairs this year. When I ask myself why I want to do it and travel so much when I could probably make just as much staying home and working for someone, my answer is for the animals. I really like animals and hope I can be a help at creating better quality of life for them. That’s my addiction and it has been for a long time. Some of you may disagree with my thoughts and methods, but I know I am trying to do what’s best for animals and humans.

I’ve made lots of changes and what I think as progress since the days at Battle Creek. I can’t imagine not wanting to keep working with animals for the rest of my life. I hope you feel the same way.

The proper pressure and approach when dealing with them will improve your life and theirs in 2018 and beyond.

 

I’ve had some things come together this year that I think will be helpful to get more out of your communication with animals.

As I wrote about earlier my watching the Ray Hunt Video that speaks about Tom Dorrance’s way around animals.

Several years ago I was at a rodeo school with my Son Rial, and we listened to Gary Leffew speak about “brain vibration frequency”. He claimed that by calming or slowing your mind down, a bull or horse would not fight the chute as bad. He said there was research proving the human energy can get a lot higher than animals, and it drives them crazy.

I spent quite a bit of time this week with Native American people at the Intertribal Agricultural Council. It got me to thinking about some of the Indian people I have worked with in my life. I think they stay calmer when dealing with things in life. Maybe we need to do a study on brain wave frequency comparing native Americans to Caucasian Americans.

Bill Lafromboise is a Native fella that I have been around most of my life. I remember how much he could get done. I’ve seen him walk an orphaned calf from the pasture to the corrals with no problem. He was real good in a corral and cattle stayed calm. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I knew he was different. He kept my vibrations up as he was always teasing me or giving me grief. If I asked him a question he would just grunt.

When I was rodeoing I would watch Native guys and they were always calm and didn’t even look like they new they were about to get on a bucker, then calmly climb on and spur the heck out of one. I really don’t remember them ever having much problems in the chute.

I’ve been around lots of real good Indian ropers, both horses and cattle. It seems so easy for them to coordinate the hand/eye and calmly put everything together with no panic. It seems like their mind is able to slow everything down and just make it so easy, and take us white folks money. I love watching how smooth everything seems with Native people when working with animals.

I think this is something we need to understand. We need to create the proper energy for the animals energy we are working with. I feel this is real critical for getting animals to relax and not be fearful around humans.

The habit so many of us have is to when things are not going the way we want we get exited and add energy. If our animals are not responding properly we might move faster, yell louder and get more aggressive. This results in more stress on the animals and the need for more expensive facilities to match the pressure we put out.

I think a way to look at this is driving a car. If you just stomp on the gas peddle and run full throttle it will be a dangerous and unsuccessful way to drive. You must keep the right amount of rpms with the engine to get the best use of the engine for driving the vehicle. Think of working with your energy with animals the same way. You need to always be changing the energy to fit the conditions. The way you apply and release pressure is very important to how animals work, and keep working for you. Learn to read the animal to understand how much is needed, and learn to be more effective in presenting it to the animal.

As I was people watching my Native hero’s, I got to thinking that maybe because of the lifestyle the people had and as they were more at one with nature because of being a part of it, that their vibrations are more like the animals they seem to get along with. When you go to the reservation or reserve life is very much different than in the white society. It’s much slower and the ego based lifestyle is not so present.

This creates some real problems. We are trying to get them to fit into the high energy (vibration) society, and at first it caused them to fight the chute (reservation). But if a horse or a bull fights the chute for to long and the pressure doesn’t come off, they quit fighting and give up.

I think we need to really face up to reality.

Obesity is a real problem. When you are low energy and eat a real high sugar diet, you are going to get problems. I think we need to match the diet to the lifestyle and we need a Native American diet that is different to match up to their specific needs. Meat and berries on the plains?

Drugs and alcoholism is another problem. I feel everyone has certain addictions.
We should try to create positive addictions with animal interaction with production agriculture that will match the society, and creating addictions to creating positive things from ancient customs or modern gadgets. Use the proper energy that fits the lifestyle that creates something someone else needs.

Pride is such an important thing. We need to find the things they can do that brings the pride back to a very proud people.

I really hope we can figure this out. We need to help each other and learn from each other to make it better for all of us.

I am going to keep watching and learning from my Native mentors on how to match my pressure to what animals and people need. I really want to thank them for that.

I have just finished a very different and enjoyable experience from my normal work.

I have been around sheep all my life. My grandfathers were both sheepmen. I had lambs in 4H. I’ve also owned and ran sheep, worked with small farm flocks and when I worked for the Sieben Ranch Company, The had several bands of herded sheep.

Clark Atkinson was Forman of the outfit and was a great stockman and camp tender.

I went to the Paicines Ranch, near Salinas or Hollister California. It is right smack dab in the middle of the Area of “The Californio’s “ style of horse and stock handling. As I looked up on the steep hills surrounding the ranch I could feel the presence of the great hands of the past in my mind.

This ranch is not into bridle horse tradition or roping. They are an organic certified property that raise grapes for wine, and are very passionate about improving the quality of all resources. They want to do this with proper farming and grazing practices. They have hair sheep that they graze, and rent the native range for grazing cattle.Everyone I met on the ranch was very passionate about what they believed was the way to do things, and were very positive in the approach they took.

The first day we had all the staff present and we discussed stockmanship in the morning and followed up with working sheep in the pasture and put them in and sorted and worked in a nice system in the afternoon.

The next two days they hosted two separate groups and we used the same format. We had real good, like minded folks all wanting to work with livestock better. We had lots of dog trainers, some folks that handled lots of cattle and people just getting into the sheep and goat business.

It was somewhat of a challenge with lots of people working the sheep, but I learned a lot the first day on how to handle things and I feel folks actually learned more because of some of the challenges we had with getting the sheep to go in to the pens. I got lots of exercise as well!

I learned a whole bunch of different thoughts on production of food.

At this operation(from my observations )they don’t have to fund the operation with immediate sales, but are trying to build infrastructure and soil and hope it returns a profit someday. Most places don’t have that luxury and have to make a profit or it is not sustainable. This creates a whole different set of options to do business. It allows you to try things that would not be possible if you have to make money to continue. I feel this is real important to have in our culture so we can learn to improve practices from trial and error, without any outside influences, so we get an accurate test for those that have to have profit for continued operation.

We need what some see as crazy or lunatics so us “normal” folks don’t seem crazy for trying something different or new.

From my observations when you have to much debt you can get yourself stuck in a system that you can’t change even if you want to, and that has become the trend in our society these days. The best thing to do is build knowledge first and then grow the enterprise you desire slowly.

A good example is college. We have students coming out with lots of debt and book knowledge, but they don’t have the practical to go with it, so they are not worth what they need to get paid in order to live and pay off the debt they have acquired.

At the ranch, they have a great bunch of young enthusiastic young people with a perfect balance of some with very good practical experience to balance it all out at the ranch. I really enjoyed observing it all.

Now, if you know me you know I’m not the biggest believer in “certified organic”.
I feel we should be way more concerned about the nutritional content of the food we eat. If you eat cardboard that has no chemicals on it, that doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Healthy nutritious food comes from healthy nutritious soil.
We can debate how it’s grown, but the fact is our body’s need certain vitamins, minerals and nutrients to be healthy. Healthy soil creates this and that is what we all should be trying to produce.

To me it seems someone should produce a meter you can buy and when you are shopping at the grocery store point it at the vegetables or fruit or meat you are going to purchase and it reads the nutrient content and that is how we should pick and price our food.

Then we would be paid for the quality of the product we produce, and science and technology would be helping us decide what we are purchasing rather than marketing.

I feel we need grazing animals to really help our soils. Good farming and animal management is real important no matter what the production system is.

My job is not to judge on what production system is right or wrong. My job is to try to help folks understand how to improve production and quality of life for animals. It’s not the system that creates stress on animals as much as the people in charge of the system. Cattle in a feedlot can be just as content as cattle on pasture and visa versa. The skills of the human can make it better or worse. That is what is important to understand if you are involved with animal production. It is a skill, and skills can always be improved upon.

So I try to learn as much as I can, and enjoy as much as I can wherever I go.
I learned very much from my trip to California and had a great time doing it.

I really was impressed by the young folks I hung out with. Claudio, may end up being the Governor of California someday. Jesse is the impressive, caring, light up the room type of person that really adds to this world and I really, really enjoyed hanging out with her and her dog Kip.

Donny and Kelly were the confidence and knowledge that kept it all smooth, and the rest of the bunch were real good guys with lots of energy and getting it done.

On the ride to the airport with Kelly we discussed lots of things but one thing he explained to me really made sense and I think it’s a good way for us all to look at agriculture and the soil we use to produce our food.

Their philosophy is to take the cream and leave the milk. That is a great visual for me to see sustainable agriculture. Smart guy.

I did get to spend part of one day horseback. They contract graze the range and they brought two loads of cattle in while I was there and I invited myself to ride with Joe and Buck. Good hands that rode good horses and had nice dogs and really saw the value of working with the cattle to settle them and get them used to single strand electric fence with proper handling. Another real nice day of stockmanship with like minded people. Have I ever mentioned that I have the greatest job in the world?

I am in Denver at the airport, headed for Minot, North Dakota for a Stockmanship and Stewardship presentation, then it’s off to Las Vegas and the Mandalay Bay for some demos with “Intertribal Agricultural Council” during the WNFR on the 11, 12 and 13th of December. It’s been a long time since I have done demonstrations at Vegas and looking forward to working with Wife Tammy and Daughter Mesa as well as our friend Kelsey Ducheneaux.

The thing we should all remember in agriculture is we all may not have the same methods but hopefully the same goals. It seems to me we should try to produce good food at a profit, in a manner that the soil and environment stay the same or get better as we produce.  That seems to be sustainable.  Don’t be afraid of someone who’s practices are different. Even if you don’t agree with them, you still may be able to learn from them, and if you create the right situation you may even convince them to look at what you think is right and change the mindset.  You won’t do it with force or anger.